


Still, I sit with you in parking lots

by ghostwit



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Study, Grief/Mourning, Hehe whups., Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Light Sadism, M/M, Mild Gore, NOT cute or fun at all. Missed opportunity there but., Recreational Drug Use, Roadtrip doomerfic + almost kinda begrudging romance, Sabo not-completely functional relationship king lawl., kinda ???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22741552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostwit/pseuds/ghostwit
Summary: (Acting like I'm not falling for it.)Marco's handsome, even in black. Maybe especially so, profile sharp and cutting where his elbows rest on his knees, dark enough that the line of his limbs bleed together and he seems all angles, abstract and painful. It makes Sabo snort a little, quick and dirty with a flash of repulsion.
Relationships: Fushichou Marco | Phoenix Marco & Sabo, Fushichou Marco | Phoenix Marco/Portgas D. Ace (past), Fushichou Marco | Phoenix Marco/Sabo, Koala & Sabo (One Piece)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 8





	Still, I sit with you in parking lots

**Author's Note:**

> Listen to this [ this ](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3GzOIfDuwyKKR6pgceUJ4S?si=uuXMW5gYRJy69fFyFo5Eiw) as you read, if you'd like. (Please do, actually.) 
> 
> EDIT: JUST GOT THAT HYPERLINK WORKING, WOOOOO. 
> 
> Quick CW for ...maybe a consent issue? Nothing happens, but one party is high and the other tries to instigate a sexual interaction (which the other party responds eagerly to) and then decides against it. That's right near the end, before the last two separating lines if you wanna skip it.

Marco's handsome, even in black. Maybe especially so, profile sharp and cutting where his elbows rest on his knees, dark enough that the line of his limbs bleed together and he seems all angles, abstract and painful. It makes Sabo snort a little, quick and dirty with a flash of repulsion. 

"Brother-yoi?" he looks up and his face is so painfully _kind_ \--eyes crimped delicately at the edges and closed-mouth smile just soft enough to let a little pain bleed through--that it makes Sabo falter in his step a little. 

"You could say that." It's Marco's turn to snort. _Me too._ "Fiancé?" Sabo asks, digs his hands a little deeper in his pockets. 

"Yes," he says, like the air's been punched out of him. Sabo wonders if that's the noise he'd make if he buried his fist right below his sternum, at the first parting of his ribs, where his skin is soft and untouched (he learns later this statement is untrue, his soft inner-belly kissed by the needle as he'd offered himself up so gladly for his father). Sabo feels his thoughts skimming out, touching on what other sounds he wonders the man could make, how many of them Ace had _heard_ , and Marco watches, watches his shoulders square with a quiet violence--

(not hulking black, the swallowing of light, like Marco, but peacock blue and expensive looking with shiny buttons, a little bit of smooth white peeking from under the parted coat. An ensemble Marco would've appreciated in any other circumstance, though he thinks there are lots of things he'd better appreciate about the blonde if fate were any less capricious. Marco asks, sometime later, and Sabo blinks up at him from under white lashes and smiles, cruel and aching, something private and smug in his purred reply. _He said it's not what he'd want._ ) 

(Marco continues wearing black.)

\--and the corner of his lip twitch upwards in a grimace, baring fangs. He absently notes that he's in immense pain, distantly wonders what he'd done to earn the scorn of the man his lover would've died for again a thousand times over, but cannot find it in himself to question whether or not he'd truly _earned_ it, rather than simply being the target of. He blinks a little, and sees the steel-faced friend that had accompanied him bristle a little, bury gloved fingers a little deeper in blue velvet to bunch it further at his elbow.

Sabo grabs his hands, lightning-quick, and the slope of his shoulders turns almost friendly, which puzzles Marco, the change too quick, too perfect to be natural. He lets his palms get pressed together wordlessly, watches as Sabo lifts them. Ace was touchy like this, too, paradoxical in his self-consciousness and being so easily baited by impulse that it was as if the impulse was never there, only the action. Sabo cringes when he turns Marco's hands to press his fingers to his lips, eyes scrunching up to make the skin of his scar twist in a little vortex and frowning, the first spontaneous action of Sabo's the older man had seen in their meeting (that's a first, too).

"Ring's cold." He offers, as explanation. Marco swallows a whimper.

* * *

Marco is drinking in his car--a grocery getter, a glossy, dark blue and uninspiring but with enough trunk space when he folds the seats to pick up whatever dresser he'd seen along the side of the road and fancied would fit in their apartment, enough space to lay side by side and twine legs curled up in the trunk more for the sake of closeness than actual lack of room when Ace had goaded Marco into silence on his reluctance to pay for a hotel on what was meant to be one of their day trips--when he meets Sabo again, for the second time. 

Knuckles rapping, _taktaktak_ , against the passenger side window loud enough to bring him out of the recent arson over on the south side or the poor children in some nondescript (unimportant, to the American listening) African country, bones poking through skin and please, please, they're so hurt, won't you look their way? or whatever the Hell the man on the radio had been droning about dutifully. He rolls the window down, flushing at being caught so pitifully in the parking tower of the hospital (the same hospital where they'd--) and his tongue is uncharacteristically leaden, cheeks numb, though not from the vodka he'd been half-heartedly sipping. "I-I don't drink-yoi." 

"I do!" Sabo says with a cheery smirk, reaching through the gap between the car's frame and the half-opened window before the older man had managed to roll it down all the way, clasping the handle and swinging the door open from his vantage, somehow making the awkward motion (fingers curled, back hunched, elbow full ninety degrees) look liquid-smooth; So like Ace. He slides into the seat with no preamble, simply reaches over to snatch the bottle from Marco's lap and brings it to his lips, taking a hard swallow. 

Marco watches his Adam's apple bob for a second, a bit of clear liquid slip from the corner of his mouth and follow his throat--cheapest stuff off the shelf at a pretty eighteen dollars and fifty cents for the bottle and a shiny red label with a name Marco couldn't remember, he wasn't lying when he said he didn't drink--before turning away, eyes fixed on his own fingers as he hooks them under the toggle to roll the window back up. Sabo turns the radio off, lowering the volume knob until Male Narrator's voice fizzles out into the sound of Sabo's gulping, glass clinking as it's set on the rubber of a floor protector that had come with the sedan. Marco smiles, albeit weakly.

"The button to turn it off is over here," Marco says, rasping at the edges enough to make the grief running through him painfully evident, as he depresses a little slot tucked below the volume knob. 

* * *

Sabo's laughing as he flips through CDs, nose scrunching up and hair hanging down in his eyes, cut by the thin wire of some aviators he'd discovered tucked in the center console of Marco's car. Something about the way the dust motes flit around him, overblown by the sun and almost delicate, makes the blonde sneak responsible glances when the highway clears. The road is straight and wide and mostly unoccupied, marked by stark lines of streaking silver where the guardrail marks a steep drop into rolling brush, a brilliantly green smudge at the edge of Marco's vision, and in the passenger seat Sabo's hair curls delicate and gold (it catches the light when he lifts his head to take a swig of what he's said is the worst coffee he's ever had, the same one which he keeps drinking) and Marco wants to kiss him (to help with the taste of the coffee), the feeling swirling in his gut as it twines irrevocably with the ballast of guilt. He's thrown up thrice in the past two days. 

"Oh, Marco," Sabo says as he slips a CD from its case, and?--rolls down the window, a rush of cool air that drown out the shattering of plastic on asphalt, tosses it out with a laugh. The car, at an easy sixty miles per hour, leaves the album behind as a glittering mess, barely visible in the rearview until it simply isn't. Marco grips the steering wheel and tamps down the uncharacteristic urge to become better acquainted with that emerald gorge to their side, let the car clatter through the trees with the full wrath of 21st century machinery as he turns a hard left, grey matter and all its useless memories splattering over the spiderweb cracks of the front windshield and Sabo's beautiful golden curls plastered to his skin with blood where they hadn't been singed off or torn from their roots in his scalp. 

(He talks about this with Sabo, too, with his bare thighs pinning the others to a dinky motel mattress and Sabo's cock settling wetly along the chiseled cut of his hip, the moon tucked behind cloud cover and safely out of sight of their grief just barely coming through the near translucent film of the Creamsicle colored curtains of what felt like hospital plastic which cast Sabo's flushed face sickly. _Please_ , Sabo says, _I wish you would.)_

(Marco squeezes his eyes shut, wants to clamp his hands over his ears like a child. He doesn't understand why Sabo's not crying. _Wouldn't it be fitting? Why don't you fill in the pieces--the blank space--God left, Marco, and scar the rest of me?_ Marco throws up a scant breakfast and a dinner taken in spoonfuls offered teasingly--or stolen, with a wry chuckle--by the younger blonde in the bathtub after Sabo comes, tears dribbling unfettered down his chin without a hint of the usual snark and screaming himself hoarse with expletives into the mattress.) 

Marco laughs along instead, digs two fingers into Sabo's punctuated ribs, obscured by a loose grey hoodie that was once Ace's, hard enough to make him wheeze. "Don't do that, though-yoi," he says, when Sabo slaps his hand.

"Hands on the wheel, old man," Sabo snickers dismissively, with an expression Marco misses because he is, in fact, a _responsible_ driver. It's a habit bred (exacerbated, mostly, Marco's always been a cautious man) by three years--and what feels like both infinitely more and infinitely less--of carting precious front seat cargo, all heavy, clumsy limbs and the smell of something safe and good and warm splashed with just a bit of beer as he throws himself over Marco's shoulder with a happy shout of his name and piles into the seat with a sedate smile. Does Sabo smile like that, ever, he wonders absently? The Sabo who smiles with a knife's edge and tongue of razors and dragon's claws, even (maybe moreso) when his head's gone fuzzy with knocking back liquor and wading knee-deep in pain, the Sabo who was born like that, maybe, or learned it out of necessity, Marco's bleeding heart begs of him. (This is a question Marco can answer in words with a resounding _yes_ long before Sabo does, Sabo's only response in their later years to Marco's dopey smile and lingering kiss being a hard, righteous slap right across his offending mouth, wounds eternally fresh and sputtering weakly.) 

The sound of the CD drive opening is quieter than the wheeze of the engine and the rush of air past their vehicle, and Marco doesn't realize it's clicked shut until Sabo is singing under his breath, a hitched, rolling high tenor that makes Marco ache all the way down to his fingertips. 

* * *

He gets calls sometimes. Marco, does, too, or at least did. They'd stopped after the first couple days after he'd dodged every call with a deliberate click, ending them succinctly on the first ring, but Sabo smiles, soft and reserved for a second, a smile his companion knows is not for him, when his Nokia shudders in his pocket and whines out something tinny and jaunty-sounding in the brief seconds before he picks up, face splitting into a toothy grin and Marco hits himself, clean across the face, engagement ring thudding against the cartilage of his nose, to keep himself from thinking of Ace. He only lets his calls ring once, too, before ducking somewhere to keep his adoring smile out of Marco's reach. 

This time he steps behind the pump, blocking his lithe form with an advertisement for soft drinks, and gives a dismissive wave to usher Marco into the attached convenience store of the gas station they'd pulled into. 

Marco's glad, he thinks, that his family trusts him enough, knowing his position as prodigal son and archetypal Responsible One with an unparalleled ability to bear any burden in the tender valley of his inked shoulder blades, to leave him alone even after he's _run off after his late fiancé's (HIS FATHER'S!) wake while they're grieving like some sort of teenager-yoi, to help--court--fuck, something! his dead fiancé's brother (his brother-yoi!), and fuck, when he should be helping them and sorting their finances and--fuck!_ His chest feels tight and hot, full of something syrupy and smoldering, and maybe, just maybe, he thinks, he should call them.

Sabo's smile falters a bit when he sees Marco digging uncut nails into the exposed skin of his arms where he'd rolled up a crumpled black button-up before returning with a vengeance, his face gaping as if someone had taken a cleaver to it, right to the bone which shines through. Koala's voice echoes through the receiver, made squeaky from distance and crackling with poor reception, and he doesn't hesitate in turning back to her. 

Marco sits on the concrete curb, wispy plastic bags full of snacks (for Sabo), booze (for Sabo), and a couple maps (for himself--and Sabo) pooling around his ankles in crinkly heaps, watching Sabo laugh animatedly until he's burned three cigarettes down to the filter. They make him cough and cause his red-rimmed eyes to water, lungs grown unaccustomed to the sting and rolling heat as he draws in hot air, but when he speaks, husky and low in his aching throat, Sabo blinks and offers him a surprised hand up in a way he thinks, stained with guilt, may be worth it. 

"THANK YOU", the plastic bags read.

* * *

"Ace used to light my cigarettes for me-yoi." Marco offers, lifting his hip to allow Sabo to slide his fingers under his seatbelt to fish a stick from the pack in his pants pocket, deft fingers slipping indulgently along his clothed thighs as he does so. Sabo doesn't speak, and, oh, Marco notes from the corner of bleary eyes, Sabo keeps a lighter on him too.

"I never smoked without him, really," he trains his eyes on the road, glancing down at the plates of the car in front of him (Florida, far from home), trying to keep the waver from his voice as the familiar _click_ of a plastic lighter is followed by the scent of tobacco. He wants to talk more, lay out his soft interior in aching sentiment where he keeps his lover for Sabo to sneer at, maybe even lay a hand on, but Sabo stops him with the press of the lit stick to Marco's shoulder, crumpling it into his shirt so it smears, ashy and black and painful right into where it'd burned straight through the fabric (melted to his skin, polyester off a superstore rack from a trip that was responsible for the plastic bottles at Sabo's feet cheap and flimsy) and into the meat of his shoulder. The ash is just a couple shades lighter than the shirt, drying as a creamy smear, flaking at the edges and adorning the distinct hole of the burn. Marco digs teeth into the plush of his lower lip and keeps his eyes on the road, even as they mist over. 

Sabo later finds the dimple in Marco's shoulder made by the scar fits the delicate arch of his nails perfectly, and he makes a habit of scoring the wound with little arcs. (He kisses it, too, one day, Marco's arms sweaty and bare and tasting of the sea.)

* * *

They're at, again, a dingy motel when the calls come up. Sabo's elbows deep in a styrofoam container of pancakes stolen from a free continental breakfast two nights before that were too limp and damp for Marco's suddenly selective palate (most of it comes up, churning the way it does with the grief rollicking under his skin) after his fingers had glanced another customer's freckle-adorned hand when she passed him the tongs, dipping the now hardened discs in hot water before popping them in his mouth whole with two fingers, crumpling the pancake in on itself comically so it fits in the pucker of his lips. His phone rings and dutifully, he picks up; He breaks tradition, though, making no effort whatsoever to hide himself from Marco sitting on the futon, thumbing his way through a local guidebook. 

He drops his phone to sink in paisley sheets, casually put on speaker with the plastic glinting as it tumbles, open-faced, and the younger levels Marco's quirked eyebrow with an even, deliberate stare. _I know._ Sabo curbs the fury racing through his veins at that, dismisses it with a couple blinks and, oh, it's enough, as Marco lowers his gaze back to his lap and listens absently to Sabo's laughter. It's still not _for_ him, but why would it have to be? He lets the happiness bloom warm in his chest with the rattle of a bullet designed to kill, tearing through organs as it tumbles careless circles through his abdomen. 

Her name is Koala, the steely-faced (soft, doe-eyed, with hair barely kissing her nape and hands of brick) companion of weeks ago, the one who makes him smile after he pulls skin from Marco’s neck and shoulders with his teeth in sinewy little scraps and makes Marco bite his own knuckles to keep from crying out, straining his abdomen against the wall of a bathroom stall that’s cold enough to broach his shirt. The one, he says, who taught him how to press gauze to Marco’s wounds, crossing them like a treasure with a neat little “X” of surgical tape. 

“I love her,” Sabo sighs out to no one in particular, tossing his phone on the couch across the room to land in Marco’s lap. It makes Marco’s breath hitch, _love_. Marco loves people too.

“I can tell,” Marco says, soft, gingerly setting the device on the rickety table hosting the complimentary coffee maker, sliding it a little on the smooth varnish and sinking deeper into the crack between cushions. Sabo turns the light out.

He wakes up later, to Sabo standing over him, eyes wide and t-shirt hanging loose over his heaving frame. 

“Up, up!” he whispers, frantic, words being chased out by the anxiety clawing up his throat, ending with his teeth clenched in a grimace. “Get off the couch!” he hisses, and Marco stands with a jolt. He steps back, coarse carpet tickling against his bare feet, watches as Sabo heaves the couch to block the door with hunched shoulders. The older man knows the furniture is light, cheap plywood kept together with industrial staples and little else, but Sabo’s shoulders tremble when he stands. His posture’s trussed and awkward, thorny vines and silver restraints making his arms pull back too tight and mouth press into a bloodless line. He knocks the lamp by the door over so it lands on the arm of the couch, caught in an angle with the papery lampshade crumpling in on itself. Marco blinks and moves to sit on the floor, legs crossed, expecting the metal column crossing over the furniture to sag, to melt under his stare and pool in a hissing, steaming puddle the size of the moon, burn the meat of his bare legs down to bone. 

* * *

“I don’t know what Ace saw in you,” Sabo lies through his teeth, sneering as Marco pulls to the scant lot along the side of the road, trundling out a duffle bag and flicking his wrist to throw the younger a water bottle. 

“I never asked,” Marco smiles, slinging the bag over his shoulder and closing the trunk (gentle, despite the tremor running through his limbs).

“He liked to tell me sometimes, though. I can’t--won’t disrespect him,” a sigh, “by not believing him-yoi.” He digs the brunts of his palm into his eyes, pressing the creases of his palms into the severe ridge of his brow which so often casts his lidded eyes in shadow. “I can’t handle the… the past tense.” Sabo cringes with Marco’s admission, feels a little bit of his lungs go brittle, crumble and collapse into the bottomless chasm of his stomach.

The older blonde sets down the trail with sure feet, sandals (strappy and practical, old man shoes, Sabo notes with a private snicker) treading rock and curving around knots of branch and mud with an accommodating arch. Sabo follows exactly in his step, gives a deliberate little twist of the heel to slough off some dirt and disrupt the path Marco had left so carefully untouched. Marco is lighter than he looks (Sabo can lift him with a single arm, wrapped around the bony span of his hips, feet lifting with an easy lean), but heavier, too, so much so. 

“Would you look at that,” he says, giving Sabo a good natured grin, smile never quite reaching his eyes. A phrase learned from men much older than he, Sabo guesses, and it makes his eye twitch. Sabo’s head goes soft with venom, hissing and burbling, _this is what Ace wanted?_

“You walk like you know your way around. Been here before?” Sabo says, crouching to rummage for rocks among the underbrush, averting his eyes from the parting in the trees where the ocean rests at the end of a stretch of pure, white sand, arced with lines of grey where the waves deposit and scattered boulders. The _with him_ is unspoken. 

“No,” a punctuated gasp. “Pops liked to travel, eh, _adventuring_ , he called it,” Marco’s smile is fond and distant and it’s Sabo’s turn to ache, profound and overwhelming, realizing that maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t really know this man. He steps forward, carelessly shucking off his boots as he does so to feel the sand against his bare soles and tossing the rock he’d gathered into the sea with a lonely plunk.

“Luffy would’ve liked that.” A silence. Marco smiles, frail at the edges.

“Tell me about your father,” Sabo looks away pointedly as Marco crosses his arms over his stomach to throw his shirt overhead, who simply looks down at his marked chest and gives a little huff. Sabo busies his fingers with the buttons of his own shirt.

“Ours,” he says, patting his sternum twice as he settles in the sand, Sabo’s boots crumpled delicately in his hands. Again, criss-cross, the posture of a man used to listening to tales with a patient smile. He offers an expectant palm, and Sabo’s brow furrows, hands working sloppily against the cuff of his sleeve. He always wears such nice clothes, fine fabrics with delicate ruffling and silken textures to rest easy against his scars (they still ache), so the peppering of clothes worn threadbare and cut too short for his own tastes make Marco’s mouth go dry, resisting the urge to bury his head in his chest and get swarmed, swallowed by soft fabrics. Marco mimics a tossing motion, a smooth flick of the wrist that makes Sabo feel like someone’s wadded a paper towel in the corner of his mouth. 

“Get it yourself,” Sabo sticks his tongue out to the end of his lip and sheds his shirt, quashing the hesitance he feels when his eyes meet the skin at his elbows, pink and raw-looking with sanguine whorls and unsightly boils. Marco simply sifts sand through his fingers, up and down, up and down.

Marco gets four skips on his first try. He’s made it up to twelve, and then back down to seven when Sabo, dripping with salt water and toes dimpled from wading, is digging through the duffel to fish out the MREs buried under duvets Sabo had stolen from their last motel. Always taking things, _I’m leaving something behind, too,_ he’d justified. He hands Marco an oatmeal cookie, hard as brick, little droplets of seawater distorting the uniform print over the beige plastic, interrupting the tail end of his fourth story. Marco tears the package open with his teeth and a happy grunt, eyes watering a little. 

Sabo doesn’t know what to say, watching him eat and thoughtlessly offer a half to Sabo (broken off in a clenched jaw with a smooth snap of his wrist), his tattoo parted so perfectly in an autopsy “Y” as he bares himself, Marco Newgate for Sabo. A man with hollow bones, happily clasping chains of obligation around capable ankles. He realizes then, in stark clarity, touched with smugness, that perhaps he shouldn't say anything at all. 

* * *

Marco keeps a gun in the glove compartment. Sabo presses it to the roof of Marco’s mouth, square barrel firm against his hard palate and aim notch set right behind his teeth. Unclicks the safety. 

Takes it out and puts it in his own. 

“Our first kiss,” Sabo says around the barrel, vicious and dripping, teeth barely showing. Marco ignores the thought of their first shared bottle, eighteen fifty with the pretty foil label that he had to crouch low to the ground, knees on linoleum, to get off the bottom shelf of the liquor store he’d never been in before.

* * *

“What is this?” Marco asks, looking up from a novel and lifting the plastic bag Sabo had thrown into his lap, giving it a little wag. 

“Co-caine,” Sabo mouths it, slow and punctuated, turning to look at Marco with a bored stare as he undoes the straps of his boots. His hair is mussed, some stuck fast to his forehead with sweat, and his nose is sharp and severe when he turns his attention to his other boot. Marco looks away. 

“Works better if you shoot it.” Sabo quips around a mouthful of barbecue chips, watching over Marco’s shoulder as he leans to cut it into neat lines with his credit card. _God, he feels like a teenager._

“What-yoi? You have a needle?” Marco lifts the stirrer out of Sabo’s now-cold coffee and holds it aloft for a single, contemplative moment, before setting it back down. It’s easy, now, to intrude on each other’s space, lift each other’s fingers as if they were their own, stretch around planes of marked skin to reach for things without sparing too many second glances. 

“No,” Sabo’s voice is smug and lilting. He reaches into the dip in the blanket made by the gap between Marco’s legs to grab the remote. The TV flickers on, and Sabo opts for a game show, unobtrusive and mindless. 

“Oh, this is…” he searches for a few minutes, nasal passage and throat numb enough to make him cluck his tongue, “not bad.” Marco sighs so softly that Sabo bites back an adoring whimper, and he reaches over to tousle Marco’s hair, fluffy and slipping easily between his fingers, the coarse grain where it’s buzzed short pleasant textural variety against Sabo’s scarred hand. 

“Nice?” Sabo offers, and Marco furrows his brow at the tender touch, so unlike the man before him. He coaxes his head down for another line, which Marco takes happily, especially so with Sabo's gentle encouragement and petting hands.

“Yes. Nice.” Marco nods, squeezing his eyes shut as an easy euphoria fills him, slow and trickling, happiness made the rain thudding against the roof of Marco’s heart, and the drug pulsing through his veins cracking it open _just_ enough. With buckets dragged across the floor with each pulse, capturing something safe and good and warm (splashed with just a bit of beer) as it trickles through the ceiling, Sabo lays to connect his shoulders to the other man’s. He’s broader than him by just a bit, and when Marco wraps his arms around Sabo he fits in the center of his bare chest like it was made for him (that thought makes him snicker a bit into Marco’s neck. _Made for him._ Ace had always been broader than Sabo, too). The buttons of Sabo's shirt (vermillion, paired smartly with a black coat with pretty gold buckles he'd shed with his leather boots) dig a crooked line into Marco's skin, and he feels the urge to drag his fingers across his abdomen and connect the divots in flesh. Marco's skin is straddling _too hot_ and _just right_ , itchy and humming, and Sabo yields with a little wiggle.

"Off, let me take my shirt off." Sabo plants a hand in the burning cross of Marco's tattoo to lift his torso and rolls his shoulders to slide the older man's hands off.

"Okay," Marco says, reaching out for the buttons with a sedate smile, because he really, _really_ doesn't feel bad anymore. He had (almost) forgotten what that felt like. 

And he kisses back when Sabo does, letting him slip his tongue into his mouth and hissing into a smile when Sabo's fangs worry his lower lip, lets his hands slide over his hips and roll the other's pants down. Because he doesn't feel bad anymore, really. 

"I want you to feel better," says Marco, sincere and sweet, and, agh, he keeps smiling _without_ the crumbly frailty at the edges and it makes Sabo feel almost bad about the way he's straddling him, working Marco's still soft cock over with his fingers and grinding a little into his thigh, the drag of his boxers against sensitive skin sending jolts of white-hot skittering up his spine. Sabo whines, equal parts pleasure and frustration. 

(And they could have sex, Sabo working him up and taking him down so easy--wouldn't even have to get him to do anything, it would be enough to just get Marco's fingers in _him_ , let him have all the fun for once--and in the morning, take him down all over again. _Is that what you did to Ace? To_ ** _my brother?_** Watch Marco's pupils narrow to pinpricks and his bare shoulders shake, stomach stained irrevocably. _Get high and fuck him?_ Marco’s hands would fist in the sheets. Not angry, no, but wounded, guilty. _Maybe get him high, too, pretty young thing, just like m--)_

 _(_ And this Marco would pause, brought back to stark white hotel sheets pulled taut by the roll of a tattooed shoulder. Ace's laughter, breathy and self-conscious, _Sorry, sorry, ah, it's okay. It's alright, sorry, you--ah, thank you, Marco. Thank you, Marco, sorry, you didn't--didn't ask for this._ a well-concealed sniffle shattering Marco's inner workings like so many tiny pieces of glass to skitter across a tile floor. Marco, letting the fragments bury deep in his soles as he bridges the gap to kiss some light into Ace's eyes _.)_

Almost bad is an understatement. He rolls off, savoring the last moment of looking down at the older man, all broad chest and tan skin made warm with yellow light, Sabo's own ringlets hanging down at the edges of his vision to claim it. Marco frowns, sucks his full lower lip into his mouth, not from the loss of contact, but the lack of reply to his previous admission.

"Fuck," Sabo hisses, adjusting his dick in his boxers and turning a sharp shoulder to his companion, "I hate you, Marco." 

Marco laughs, kissed with bitterness, mutters something that sounds like an "ouch" before happily clicking out the light. A woman on the television brandishes a blue car with a theatrical flourish, and Sabo dreams of pinning Marco up like a butterfly in a glass case, the stark blue and rippling gold of his tattooed wings on neat display. 

Marco doesn't sleep, stays up and lets the high lick through his veins like a syrup, dense and slow-moving in jittering limbs until it peters out on the comedown. Even with the guilt crawling back up the column of his throat, digging black barbs into his esophagus, he sets to dutifully clear the nightstand of the third line he'd set. The comedown is almost as good as the high, raw and painful with every hard swallow nestling the hooks of grief deeper in his soft inner lining. It's almost absolution, the way it breaks him open white-hot, making tears come with repressed shudders and restrained rasps, the gift of something he knows how to bear, absorbing pain like he was made for it. A niggling in the back of his mind says that Sabo would enjoy that thought.

(He wouldn't mind if he could take Sabo's pain, too, but he doubts that's the idea that would set the younger blonde's blood alight.) 

* * *

“Let me take you home,” Marco mutters, speaking into Sabo’s shoulders, lips soft on scar tissue as careful hands unfold fine fabric. 

“Maybe,” says Sabo, rolling his shirt off his shoulders and placing his hand on Marco’s hip, stroking the skin over the jut of bone, and because he can’t help himself, “Kiss me?”

Marco’s eyes go liquid, and everything in Sabo freezes--sharp and brittle and unrelenting cold that burns Marco’s prints clean off where they kiss skin and ah, maybe, just maybe, fuck, I’ve fucked up, haven’t I?-- but he smiles, lays his palm flat (the one with the ring) over exposed shoulder that’s gouged coarse with scar tissue to suffuse him with warmth, and reaches up. 

* * *

People don’t ask when Sabo comes back with a ring glinting on his finger, wide and smooth, and when, a few weeks later, the ring is gone. 

People don’t but Koala doubts she counts in his head as a _people_ , a member of the collective mass, writhing to be saved with clawing hands that bury others beneath as they gasp for air. 

And so, 

“Where’d it go?” She knows where it came from, Marco’s fingers distinctly bare, pale skin circling his index stark as a brand, as the welt in his shoulder. 

Sabo turns, feigning a shrug and dropping his head to loll against his shoulder. His arms are still stiff, so Koala narrows her eyes, and he notices, of course he does, but elects to ignore it. “Flushed it, probably.” 

People don’t ask Marco either, only offer him consoling glances and quick pats along the jut of his shoulder blade poking through thin black cotton. He smiles tiredly, a consolation of his own to them.

**Author's Note:**

> I SPENT SO LONG TOSSING AROUND TITLES LOOOL. I write the most self-indulgent shit, on God jhgjbcnv. It's fine. I might write some more in this universe because I have a couple other ideas that appeal to me about writing this, particularly something about Marco's tattoos! Oughh. I also wanted them to get married because the last name Newgate makes me soft, lol. A couple more roadtrip scenes, too, but I already dumped so much stuff.
> 
> Forgive me if this is shitty, I wrote the first half of this in one night in a phucking frenzy, lol. I also have NOT read this top-down all the way through, which I should, but I'm on a weekend trip and thought I'd just, uh, post something.
> 
> PLEASE comment if you have anything at all to say, I'd be really excited to hear it. Thank you so much for reading if you did get through this!
> 
> hazeism.tumblr.com


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